Without the slightest attempt to reassure the boy, the doctor forced loose the boy’s hold on the pocket, and inserting his hand, drew out the ten-dollar bill and a medley of small coins.
“Now,” he said, “I’ve taken your money, so they can’t. Understand?”
The urchin began to snivel.
“Ah, you have no right to be so cruel to him,” protested Miss Durant. “It’s perfectly natural. Just think how we would feel if we didn’t understand.”
The doctor fumbled for his eye-glasses, but not finding them quickly enough, squinted his eyelids in an endeavour to see the speaker. “And who are you?” he demanded.
“Why, I am—that is—I am Miss Durant, and—” stuttered the girl.
Not giving her time to finish her speech, Dr. Armstrong asked, “Why are you here?” while searching for his glasses.
“I did not mean to intrude,” explained Constance, flushing, “only it was my fault, and it hurts me to see him suffer more than seems necessary.”
Abandoning the search for his glasses, and apparently unheeding of her explanation, the doctor began a hasty examination of the now naked boy, passing his hand over trunk and limbs with a firm touch that paid no heed to the child’s outcries, though each turned the onlooker faint and cold.
Her anxiety presently overcoming the sense of rebuke, the overwrought girl asked, “He will live, won’t he?”